We love our Twitter, Facebook and email for marketing, but nothing beats face time with a potential consumer – just ask the Fuller Brush Man. But before you start knocking on doors, download this new, free ebook from GoToMeeting. It’s called ‘The Best of Both Worlds: How to Effectively Leverage Social Media Relationships with Real-Time Collaboration Tools” and though the title is way too long, it’s packed with practical suggestions and inspiration to help you get face-to-face with your customers.

The ebook outlines ways for marketers to ramp up their social media marketing efforts through the use of Webinars and online conferences. If you’re like me, you probably associates those words with corporate training sessions but after reading the report, I saw the possibilities for creative marketing. Let’s start with the basics of any campaign.

Afro-Cheez and Neko-do had their fifteen minutes of fame last week when the Miami Herald ran their Twitter “quotes” as part of their newspaper’s coverage of the anniversary of 9/11.

Understandably, some of the Herald’s actual reporters (Remember reporters? Like Clark Kent, only without the bulky camera) objected and said so in a letter they posted in the newsroom. Their objection was two fold, partly they objected to the idea of displacing actual reporting with inane comments from Twitter. Second, they brought up the fact that the Twitter attributes made the relevancy and quality of the “quotes” even worse because they aren’t real names.

I gotta say that I’m with them on this. Having made my living as a reporter in a variety of mediums over the last nineteen years, I cringe at the way social media has crept in as acceptable journalism.